by E. G. Foley
“Y-yes, Father—”
“Then how dare you disobey me?” Shemrazul thundered in a voice that shook the throne room and could’ve made the carved devil pillars tremble.
“I-I-I b-beg your forgiveness, Father.” Heart pounding, Wyvern kept his gaze down.
“Get up.” Shemrazul snorted a sulfurous cloud of disdain. “Quit sniveling and explain yourself. Tell me why you ignored my specific instructions and instead went after the boy and the sea-witch first.”
For a fleeting instant, climbing to his feet, Wyvern considered claiming he had merely forgotten the sequence in which Shemrazul wanted the tasks done when he’d commanded him to undertake his coup.
“Don’t even think about lying to me,” the demon said.
“Sorry, your greatness. I…I can only say that my enthusiasm for becoming a father, l-like you, must’ve m-marred my judgment. But I”—he gulped—“I won’t let it happen again.”
“See that you do not.” Shemrazul paused, apparently mollified by Wyvern’s groveling. “Time grows short, Nathan. Zolond strays ever farther by the hour. Your coronation must occur on the great feast of Samhain, and that is fast approaching.”
Wyvern was awed to hear the date was set. All Hallows’ Eve…
“So, enough of this idiotic dawdling. You must get to work now gathering allies. Oh, but I suppose if you are cleverer than I am, then you don’t need my help—”
“No, I do, mighty Horned One! I am nothing without you. Don’t abandon me as you’ve abandoned Zolond!”
“It was Zolond who abandoned me,” he shot back. “Be that as it may. If you do not intend to heed my instructions, then perhaps I should start trying to find someone else to wear the Black Crown—”
“No, sire, please, I beg you!” Wyvern clasped his hands before him. “I was born for this. I will serve you unto my last drop of blood, my final breath. I’ll make you proud, Father!”
“Humph.” Shemrazul folded his mighty arms and sulked.
“I mean it, sire. Only tell me your will and I’ll go at once. Wherever you command.”
“That’s more like it.” Narrowing his fiery eyes, the demon lowered his massive arms to his sides. The tips of his horns bobbed as he nodded. “Very well. But this time, let me spell it out for you clearly so you may understand.”
Wyvern nodded, waiting at attention.
“Now, listen carefully,” Shemrazul instructed. “Go first to the oracle—he is on your side and may have wisdom to offer. Then pay a visit to the general. You’ll need his military expertise for the war…”
CHAPTER 49
Betrayer Betrayed
After Wyvern snarled at Waldrick and Fionnula as he went gusting by, the diva had let out an offended little huff and flounced off to her chamber to sulk. Left alone in the black, polished hallway, Waldrick realized he suddenly had at his disposal a rare opportunity to snoop.
For the moment, he knew where her precious Nathan was: distracted elsewhere. So long as Waldrick stayed clear of the Nephilim’s general direction, this was his chance to have a discreet look around and try to figure out what the blazes was going on within the mysterious walls of the Black Fortress.
After all, the revelation earlier today that his brother and sister-in-law were not in their coffins had made it crystal-clear that Wyvern and Fionnula were keeping things from him.
Well, Waldrick Everton would not be played for a nincompoop. If his cohorts would not tell him what was going on, then he would jolly well piece it together for himself.
One way or the other, he thought, I will get to the bottom of this.
Then he set out to do just that, sneaking and sauntering along by turns up and down the hallways, acting casual, nose in the air, whenever one of the bridge officers hurried by.
Waldrick strolled past, all but whistling like he had nothing to hide and every right to be there, and, to his relief, none of them bothered him.
Having cleared these hurdles, he pressed on, tiptoeing across intersections, ducking the notice of distant guards. He knew by now to give the Noxu a wide berth—although, the other day, he’d been amused to overhear a knot of the half-trolls grumbling that all humans looked alike to them, except for the few who were easy to distinguish by some obvious feature, like Zolond by his age, or Wyvern by his height, or Fionnula by her flashy-colored gowns.
But the rest of the crew, why, the tusked mercenaries joked among themselves, the only way they could tell the bridge crew members from “the white-coated ones downstairs” was by their uniforms.
Hmm. Waldrick had made a mental note of both pieces of information. He would certainly use their difficulty in telling humans apart if he ran into any trouble with the armored barbarians.
But he was even more intrigued by the comment about white-coated humans somewhere downstairs. Given Zolond’s famous proclivities for unholy experiments, blending species, it made sense that there might well be a team of scientists on duty somewhere in the Black Fortress.
So far, Waldrick hadn’t noticed anyone of that description. It piqued his curiosity, since it might have something to do with why his brother and sister-in-law hadn’t been in their coffins.
Determined to look into it and see what he might see, he continued exploring, dodging and darting along between the shadows, making not a sound.
Oh, he was crafty. He rather delighted himself with his sneaking abilities, slipping past closed doorways, peering into open ones, and scanning various uninteresting chambers. Always black! What a dismal place. Would it kill them to use a little color? They had no sense of fashion, these people. Most uncivilized.
Then he spotted the opening to another onyx stairwell ahead. A sign hung over it: No Unauthorized Personnel.
Aha, that looked promising. Since it wasn’t the same staircase that Wyvern had entered, Waldrick decided to chance it, stealing his way along the corridor to the big, rectangular opening of the stairwell.
When he slipped through it, he found that the stairs went both up and down, zigzagging back and forth. It was impossible to see where either end led to because each flight of steps turned at a landing, then doubled back upon itself.
Waldrick could only see as far as the landings. Intrigued, he opted for the downward stairs, in light of what he’d heard the Noxu mention.
A clammy draft brushed against his face as he crept silently down the steps, sliding his back along the jet-black wall.
As he neared the landing, he heard a strange, low sound coming from somewhere below: a slow, dull, rhythmic thud-thudding that seemed to resonate out of the very walls.
What on earth is that? Fear made his heart skip a beat, but Waldrick ventured on. After a dozen steps, he gained the landing and peeked carefully around the corner.
The stairwell ended at the bottom of the next flight, and there appeared to be some sort of room down there, but he was too far away to tell yet what it might hold. Determined to get a closer look, Waldrick sidled down the final flight of stairs, the blood pumping in his veins.
He did not hear anyone speaking or moving around, but he sensed the presence of someone down there. Maybe multiple someones.
The low-pitched rhythm he’d been hearing grew louder and louder as he neared the bottom of the staircase: a deep, continuous lub-dub like a giant heartbeat. It made the hairs on his nape stand on end.
Whatever was going on around here, he must be getting close. Drifting to a silent halt near the bottom step, Waldrick held his breath, gathered his courage, and then stole a peek around the side of the wall enclosing the stairwell.
Though he stayed hidden, his quick scan revealed a spacious, kidney-shaped lobby with a black (of course) flagstone floor. On the opposite wall, a bit to his left, were a large and formidable pair of doors.
Guarded by an equally large and formidable pair of Noxu warriors.
Waldrick winced, then continued scanning. He saw that a wide hallway joined the lobby from the left; on the right sat a smaller side room with an open doorway o
ver which hung a sign that said Cloakroom.
Pondering all this with a frown, Waldrick withdrew again behind the cover of the stairwell. Suddenly, he heard a distant commotion. The clamor echoed toward the lobby like it was coming from somewhere down that adjoining corridor.
Intrigued, he peeked out again and saw the noises had made the Noxu guards perk up, as though they had been dozing on their feet with boredom.
The barbarians stared in the direction of the hallway as the sounds grew louder. Now distant shouting could be heard—pleading, a few rough cries, and a bevy of hurried footfalls pattering over the flagstone floor. An ear-piercing creak attended the clamor, like a squeaky wheel.
“Guess they caught another one,” the larger Noxu grunted to his comrade.
“Better get the door,” the shorter, thicker one with a broken tusk replied.
Waldrick stared discreetly around the corner of the stairwell, unnoticed, as the two half-trolls pulled the massive doors open.
As they did so, the heartbeat sound pulsed out louder into the lobby, and, through the open doorway, Waldrick beheld a baffling sight.
A cavernous room yawned, dimly lit, with a tall, massive machine like a giant glass pillar in the middle of the space. A tangle of wires and countless tubes flowed out of the device in all directions, while, inside it, a hydraulic pump of some sort churned, sloshing a soupy green liquid inside.
He saw that the liquid traveled out through the tubes, but before he could even begin to wonder what the strange device was, the flurry of footfalls and the rhythmic squeak approaching up the hallway suddenly burst into the lobby in the form of four white-coated men rolling a patient on a gurney at top speed, headed toward the big room.
An infuriated man struggled on the gurney, but he was strapped down, awake and kicking as best he could. “Let me go! You won’t get away with this! The Order will—”
Brisk and businesslike, the white-coated men ignored his protests, whisking him on toward the Noxu.
“Come through!” The broken-tusked guard waved the team of doctors or scientists or whatever they were into the big room while he and his comrade held the doors open.
“Where’d you get this one?” the larger guard asked.
“A pair of Drow bounty hunters just brought him in,” one of the scientists hastily explained as they rolled their struggling captive toward the waiting doorway.
The guard bobbed his head. “Lord Wyvern will be pleased.”
“You can’t do this!” the bound man hollered. “The Order will be waiting for me to check in! When they don’t hear from me, they’ll send—”
“Oh, shut up,” one of the scientists muttered. Then he covered the man’s mouth with a cloth apparently doused in chloroform.
The patient stopped struggling as the scientists sped him on through the open doors and into the huge, twilit room beyond.
One of the doctors turned back. “Listen,” he said to the Noxu. “Those two Drow mercenaries are still seeing to their horses in the loading bay, but they’ll be along shortly. One of you needs to take them up to see Lord Wyvern so they can collect their bounty.”
The Noxu grunted in agreement, and when the doctor disappeared, hurrying after his colleagues, they pushed the doors shut and resumed their posts.
Ducking back again behind the stairwell wall, Waldrick’s heart pounded as he assessed his situation. Well, this is inconvenient.
At any moment now, one barbaric Noxu and two of those keen-eyed, infamously ruthless dark elf mercenaries were going to be coming up this staircase where he stood.
Waldrick knew he needed to get out of there at once, but he could not bear to pry himself away. He had to know what was going on. Who was that poor blackguard they had captured and what did he have to do with the Order?
Never mind him! You have to get out of here before you get caught, his better sense warned.
Ah, but Waldrick had so rarely listened to his better sense in life. Why start now?
Instead, when one of the scientists returned a moment later, he saw his opportunity.
The scrawny, white-coated fellow poked his head out from between the big doors, a frantic look on his face. “Security, come quick! We need some muscle in here! The new Lightrider’s stronger than he looks. The sedative’s barely working. He’s broken his restraints!”
At once, the Noxu rushed into the chamber after the scientist; the doors began drifting closed.
Almost without thinking, Waldrick dashed across the foyer into the cloakroom. He had no idea what he thought he was doing, but as he swept the room with a glance, he found it lined with wooden pegs from which hung more white lab coats.
They reminded him absently of his eccentric little nephew, Archie. He quickly pulled one on. Hanging from the same peg underneath the lab coat, he discovered a pair of protective goggles. He put these on too, the better to hide his face. His heart thumping like it would jump out of his chest, he spotted a clipboard nearby with a pencil tied to a string. He snatched it up as added props for his disguise, then fled out of the cloakroom.
Stealing across the lobby, he slipped into the big chamber before the Noxu guards could return to their posts.
Nobody even noticed him as he darted to the left, hugging the curved stone wall of the cavelike chamber.
All of the action was happening over on the right-hand side of the room, where the man on the gurney was sitting up, thrashing about, and trying to fight his way free of his captors. It was pointless, of course, but Waldrick used the distraction to blend into the shadows.
While the Noxu wrestled the captive into submission, the scientists crowded around, shouting at one another and arguing about what to do.
Heart pounding, Waldrick sneaked along the opposite wall, heading for the far end of the strange space.
He had no idea how he was going to get out of here, but he needed to get to the bottom of this. Because, clearly, whatever all this was, it had to do with the secrets Wyvern and Fionnula had been keeping about their plans—and his Lightrider brother’s fate.
Had the Dark Druids captured Jacob and Elizabeth the same way?
Stealthily following the curve of the stone wall, Waldrick scanned the soaring space as he hurried to put a safer distance between himself and the knot of scientists around the unfortunate Lightrider.
There was nobody else in the room. Well, he wasn’t sure it could even be properly called a room, but at least it wasn’t black.
The circular walls were the smooth brownish gray of natural rock. Indeed, the whole chamber resembled a giant cave; a domed ceiling of limestone arced some thirty feet overhead.
It was then Waldrick noticed that the walls were honeycombed with countless carved niches.
They reminded him of the dark, spooky catacombs he had once visited underneath the city of Rome. But tucked into each of these hollowed-out recesses was a long glass box…
Like a coffin.
Waldrick froze, narrowed his eyes, and looked harder. His throat closed as he realized there was a person—or, at least, a body—inside each glass case.
Gooseflesh instantly broke out down his arms.
All the while, the heartbeat machine in the center of the chamber pumped on. Lub-dub! Time seemed to slow to a drip as Waldrick’s gaze followed the course of the tubes flowing out from the device.
A shudder of horror ran through him as he realized that the tubes fed into each one of these countless glass containers.
Still completely confused, he gathered his nerve and began taking closer looks into the coffins nearest him.
Some of the alcoves were at knee, waist, or shoulder level, but there were many rows above, carved into the rock dome. These could only be reached by climbing up the wheeled library ladders that were placed here and there around the huge chamber, apparently for that purpose.
He bent down and peered into several of the alcoves. Upon closer inspection, he saw, to his relief, that the people in the glass boxes were not quite dead. Their chests rose
and fell, so, clearly, they were breathing.
They appeared to be asleep, or in some deep, magically induced coma.
Moreover, each one had a tube from the heartbeat machine inserted into his or her wrist.
No—not the wrist, exactly. Waldrick stared, the blood draining out of his face. The tubes were connected to the Flower of Life implant that each prisoner had embedded in his or her forearm.
Icy realization prickled down his spine. They were all Lightriders. Every captive here…
He cast about in a sudden panic, then confirmed his theory by glancing at a few more of the unconscious people in the glass boxes.
They all had a Flower of Life embedded in their arms. He knew what the device looked like because his own brother had been a Lightrider. So had Elizabeth.
Waldrick felt his stomach plummet to his feet as a horrible suspicion blossomed in his mind. What if he’s here? What if they both are?
What if they’ve been here all this time? Alive…
Terrified, he turned away from the random Lightrider he had been staring at. His gaze swept the entire cavern.
Impossible. It’s been twelve years!
Not even the Dark Master Zolond could keep someone alive for so long in this state, surely.
Waldrick began running from alcove to alcove, searching for the brother he thought he had murdered. Nearly tripping over the endless wires and tubes crisscrossing the chamber, he could barely stop himself from shouting Jacob’s name as he hunted.
At least he now realized why they kept the place so dim: they didn’t want to wake up their prisoners.
Frantically, Waldrick dragged over a library ladder and began climbing up the rungs, peering into all the alcoves he could see. Where are you? Are you here?
There must have been sixty or seventy sleeping men and women in all. Seventy captured Lightriders! He hadn’t heard anything about this.
Of course, he had been in prison for the past year… But Waldrick thrust away his myriad questions about how this could’ve happened. The important thing was his brother might still be alive.
Maybe there’s still hope. If anyone could survive this, it would be Jacob. He had always been the strong one.
